Bex Brands has been having a blast with our new clients, Brian Malarkey and James Brennan (the people behind Searsucker) as we tackle their new restaurant adventure, Burlap, to open in Del Mar this summer.

Over the years, we found that creative briefs and brand questionnaires lacked the information creatives needed to understand where the clients head was at or how they envisioned their brand. For example, “hip” may mean something completely different from one person to the next. As a result, we develop an inspiration board as part of the brand process. By using words AND images, we can ensure that we understand what the client is describing and the client understand how we interpret what he or she has described, without spending a tremendous amount of time & energy developing original work. Once we have confirmed we are on the same page, we take the desired elements we discussed and alter the combination to create an execution that is unique to the brand.

This is an example of our inspiration board for a window display we’re developing for Burlap, coined by Brian and James as “Asian Cowboy”. You notice the energy of the kung-fu and western movie posters, the textures of the rice bags, the bold use of fonts and the real-life look at Asian markets.

The window display will be going up shortly and we are really excited present the finished product!